Although boring food, banged-up bodies and origami maps
make camping a lot harder than it looks in the Dodge Dakota
commercials, something like a middle-of-the-night look at the Milky
Way makes all the trouble worthwhile.

Many environmentalists oppose Sen. Ben Nighthorse
Campbell's bill to turn Colorado's Black Canyon National Monument
into a national park, because the bill would allow continued
hunting, grazing and motorized recreation in some areas.

Park enemies in Congress reduced the budget for the new
Mojave National Preserve to one dollar - an extreme example of the
way Congress often creates parks and monuments but is reluctant to
provide any money to support them.

The decision to put the BLM, rather than the Park Service,
in charge of the new Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in
Utah, is part of a trend toward blurring the lines among the roles
of the federal land management agencies.